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Captain Ben
Kilpela's
Miscellaneous
ISLE ROYALE Photographs
Summer, 2003
Ben Kilpela's Isle Royale Web Site Home Page
(NOTE: Click on the thumbnail photos for full-size
photos; use [back] button to return to this page.)
INTRODUCTION: Here's a few photos taken
last summer at Isle Royale. I get to spend a good deal of time on the island
both during lay-overs on the days when I am the captain of the Isle Royale Queen III and when I camp overnight on the island
each summer. The island had another good summer in 2003. There was adequate
rain and Lake Superior stayed up a bit, though lake levels remain down
across the Great Lakes (worst on Lake Michigan).
People saw plenty of moose, though I struck out this summer. The trails were
in great condition wherever I went. All these photos on this page were taken
with my Olympus C2100UZ digital camera.
Isle Royale DESKTOP BACKGROUND: You can make any shot
background for your computer desktop simply by pulling up the large version,
right clicking as your cursor is on the picture, and then choosing the
set-background button on the pop-down menu.
Let’s start with wildlife during 2003. I was cruising along the Tobin Harbor Trail
midsummer when this little fellow surprised me right beside the trail.
Usually, the red squirrels chatter at you a bit and then split deeper into
the woods, but this friendly chap stayed on his branch, nibbled at his twig
(fir needles for lunch, I believe), and let me watch him for a minute or
two.
In recent times, pileated woodpeckers
became very rare throughout the Great Lakes
region, but they have made a tremendous comeback because of improved
environmental conditions everywhere in the north country. Now they are regular sights across Isle Royale, though they remain very elusive and shy and
difficult to photograph. I’ve tried to get pictures of pileateds for years,
without much success. But my son Logan
and I came across this more easy-going specimen bashing away at a fallen snag
in the woods down toward Three Mile Camp off the Rock Harbor Trail. We
watched him for a couple minutes before he moved on to better foraging on a
standing snag nearby. These speedy, reclusive birds must be getting more used
to human beings nowadays, since they seem much less fidgety in general.
As I said above, I struck out on moose in
2003, but I decided to throw in a shot of two moose taken two years ago from Mount Franklin on the Greenstone Ridge Trail. A cow and calf frolicked in a small, swampy
pond at the base of the Mount Franklin cliff for some 20 minutes before heading off into
the woods nearby. The cow kept dunking
her head deep into the water for half a minute at a time while getting a good
hold on some roots down below. The calf mostly stayed on shore, though it
finally wandered into the water, as shown.
Sticking to wildlife, here’s a shot of a
gaggle of mergansers near the mouth of Tobin Harbor very late in the summer. They were keeping very close together, for
surely otters were hunting them. Lots
of waterfowl were in Tobin this past summer, including a couple of nesting
pairs of loons who were friendly with me all summer long. You will see in the following photos that I
was still not done spending a lot of time in Tobin Harbor in 2003.
This gorgeous place has just got me wrapped around its little finger
right now. I can’t get enough of Tobin’s.
A spooky shot. I found a raven wing and some other raven
remains on the side of a ridge on the north shore of Tobin Harbor. It was up near the mouth of the harbor, late in the summer
during my annual camping trip to Isle Royale. I
don’t know what might have killed the raven, since there were no prints left
behind. That’s lichen on the rock, of
course.
We have discussed wildlife, and now we turn
to people. My youngest, Drew, now 8 years old, came to Isle Royale with me
this summer for one of our day trips to the island when I am captain of the
Queen. We visited Scoville Point by
boat, and this is a shot of Drew cautiously working his way down the tilted
rocks right above the point itself.
My older son Logan, now 11, went to Isle Royale numerous times over the summer. He saw moose a
couple times, both with my brother Don, who is another regular captain of the
Queen. On a day he went with me, I took this shot of him on the Tobin Harbor
Trail. We looked for moose once again, but had no luck, though we ended up
seeing that pileated woodpecker pictured above.
Yours truly, Captain Ben, along the shore of Tobin Harbor. I am on the north
side of the harbor about a mile southwest of the seaplane dock. I made a
complete circumnavigation of Tobin during my stay at the island this year.
Turning to some wildflower shots, let’s
start with this shot of a stand of blue flag irises that I came across on an
unnamed island out toward Blake Point late in the summer. Irises show up in some
unexpected places from time to time. I don’t know how they grow, so I don’t
understand why they show up some years and fail to emerge in others.
A gorgeous wood lily in late summer
sunshine along the Scoville Point Trail.
Here’s one of my favorite shots from Summer
2003. This is a calypso orchid I found in the woods almost to Three Mile Cap
up the ridge from the Tobin Harbor Trail. Orchid hunting is a favorite
activity of mine around the Fourth of July on Isle Royale. On this day, the rain was coming down steadily, and
I struggled to keep the camera and lens dry as I shot the several orchids
that were growing in a small, shaded meadow created by fallen spruces. The
flower you see here is about one inch tall on a stem about six inches high.
Many years I have failed to find orchids, but of late I’ve been having better
success, which might be because there has been a little more rain on the
island the past couple years. On this same day, I also enjoyed watching one
of the pairs of Tobin loons for a time, though I failed to get any good
photos of them.
A shot of some fringed polygala beside a
fallen birch. This one makes a particularly nice background for your desktop.
We had a couple big blows late in the
summer, which is not entirely unexpected for Isle Royale. Here’s a shot of the waves rolling in from the
southeast toward Scoville Point, which is exposed to the fury of Lake Superior from the east and southeast. Waves are always
difficult to shoot. It’s hard from this photo to feel the force of the 35
mile per hour wind that was ripping through my clothes and jostling me on my
feet -- or sense the frightening roughness of these waters inside Rock Harbor. I had been canoeing on Tobin this morning, and I
left my canoe on the south shore of Tobin and hiked over the ridge to see what all the roaring was about
(though I knew well enough).
Here’s a nice shot of the Queen III in
historic Snug Harbor, which is the main entry point into the National
Park.
Tobin Harbor once again. A shot taken from
up on the south-side ridge across to the Greenstone. That is rain moving over
the ridge in the distance and across the harbor waters.
To conclude this year’s slide show, here’s
a another shot of Tobin, this time from the north side of the harbor looking
east toward the mouth of the harbor. I am up on a ridge on which there have
been lots of the blueberries in the past, and 2003 proved to be a great year
for berry-picking once again.
Well, that's it for 2002. Look for another
page of miscellaneous photos from summer 2004.
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